


i dreamed a dance with you

by statusquo_ergo



Series: it's not pain, it's just uncertainty [2]
Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: Assumptions, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-10-05 02:16:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10295285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/statusquo_ergo/pseuds/statusquo_ergo
Summary: Mike has to make a change.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place almost immediately after the finale of Season 6.
> 
> Prompt:
> 
> yeeeey i got one. Mike breaking up the engament as he realizes his feeling for harvey, but never telling him because he truly believed that donna and harvey were end game

“Hey Rachel, can we talk?”

He wanted to catch her at a moment of peace, a moment of calm; it’s unfortunate that this job doesn’t actually offer those at their pay grade, so what he gets is less a relaxed reprieve and more a breather sneaked in the middle of a marathon. Still, she’s a nice person, and she loves him, so she makes the effort to look up from her laptop and smile.

“Sure, what’s up?”

Knocking his hand against the doorframe, he thinks that he should have prepared better, although he’s not quite sure how.

“I didn’t mean right now, I mean more like…at the end of the day?”

Her smile freezes, and she reaches up to brush the hair out of her eyes. He can’t read her thoughts, exactly, but he gets the gist: _We already live together, we’re already engaged, this is a horrible time to talk about having children, he just got his job back, so then who-what-where-when-why-how-oh._

She’s always been smart.

“How about you take me to lunch,” she proposes, already stashing her work away without waiting for his docile nod. He at least has the good sense not to make small talk as he follows her down to the lobby and out the door, down the block and around the corner to that upscale sushi place she likes.

Smiling politely at their waiter, she orders without looking at the menu and leaves him fumbling to make a decision on the fly.

“Soba” is the first word he sees. He’s had it before; he doesn’t really like it.

Well, that fits, doesn’t it.

There are two other couples in the smallish room and one trio speaking in hushed tones as they stab their fingers at contracts and loose papers; Mike hopes Rachel doesn’t plan to draw too much attention to herself.

“So,” she enunciates as he schools his expression into blankness. “What did you do?”

Now hold on a second.

“I—”

_~~didn’t~~ couldn’t ~~yet~~ do anything ~~but I wanted to~~_

“—was just thinking…”

“Why?” she interrupts again, and he doesn’t snap, he won’t break.

“You don’t deserve to be tied down to someone who isn’t one hundred percent committed to you,” he states as flatly as he can, _this is fact and please don’t argue._ “I love you and I respect you, and I know you love me too, but at this point in my—in our lives, we’re putting our careers first—”

“Mike—”

“Which is _fine,_ ” he stresses, putting his hand on the table just to have something to press down on, “but I need some stability in my life right now, after—everything that happened, and we can’t _both_ be putting our all into our jobs and expect to make this work too, so…I, think we should call off the engagement.”

There it is.

Somehow he wasn’t expecting it to be quite so…easy.

She drums her nails against the tabletop and rests her chin in her palm.

“Is it because you’re back at Specter Litt?”

It always comes back to this, doesn’t it?

(You know it. I know it.)

Nevertheless, he furrows his brow irately. “No, it’s—what I said, I don’t think we’re at a great place to balance work and…you know, family. We’re doing fine, but you know marriage changes things, whether you want it to or not, and…I can’t, right now.”

(Let’s neither of us say it.)

Leaning back, she scrutinizes him carefully (moth under glass); a waiter leaves them a pitcher of water and scuttles off without waiting for thanks.

He tries not to look away, but she surely won’t appreciate him staring.

Hey, look, a napkin.

He can’t imagine what she’s thinking; maybe he doesn’t want to, maybe he’s afraid, but she has every right, doesn’t she? She can think whatever she wants of him, of them.

And there’s a chair over there.

“Okay,” Rachel says eventually, still tilting away from him. “Okay.”

Okay? That’s it?

An accusation would definitely blow up in his face; he waits for her to finish.

The waiter returns with their food, and has it really been so long?

“Mike, tell me there isn’t another woman.”

She knows. He hears it in her bitterness, sees it in her glare. She won’t say it, can’t say it, but she knows.

(Does everyone?)

(Does _everyone?_ )

“There isn’t another woman,” he echoes, because this is how she wants to put on their charade and he’ll give it to her, he’ll spare her that much. “I promise. I really just think this is a bad time, and if we try to stay together, we’re just going to end up hurting each other.”

She takes a bite out of a sushi roll, refusing to meet his gaze.

“You don’t want to make this work, do you?” she asks, and he can’t decide if it’s resigned or confrontational. Can’t be both.

“I don’t want you to get hurt,” he evades.

It’s true, of course, that it’s a little bit late for that.

Scoffing, she shakes her head and digs in for another roll; he pays careful attention as he scoops up a few slick noodles and tips them into his mouth.

The moment her plate is empty, she gathers her coat and walks away, and one of the men in the trio across the floor looks at him empathetically.

Don’t do that, buddy. You don’t know the half of it.

—

Rachel’s drawn her office’s blackout shades; Mike understands. He hadn’t planned to try to talk to her right now, anyway.

It was for the best. He does love her, it’s true, but he knows her fantasies, her dream wedding, dream marriage, dream family, and she deserves all that and more; her happily ever after doesn’t include a groom with his heart cut in two, that’s for sure, a husband constantly having to remind himself that she’s good for him, she’s good enough.

“Good enough” shouldn’t even enter into the equation.

Tonight will be another challenge, but they’ll deal with that then.

He doesn’t mean to—well, he does, but he doesn’t _want_ to mean to—but rather than head straight for his own office, he ambles to the opposite corner of the floor to see how Harvey is settling in. ( _I dare you to be honest.)_ Donna’s desk is pristine as ever, but Harvey’s office still has a couple of boxes in the corner and the record shelf is only filled about halfway. It makes sense; they’re probably arranged in some incredibly specific order, and Harvey hasn’t exactly had a lot of free time on his hands recently. ( _Whose fault is that?)_

Donna looks up from her notes when he makes his way over, offering an indifferently professional smile that he hasn’t seen in awhile.

“Mike, did you need to talk to Harvey?” she asks, and he sticks his hands in his pockets as he raises his shoulders awkwardly.

_(Always and every day.)_

“I wanted to get his opinion on something,” he says, “but it’s not urgent.”

Her gaze turns studious, judgmental, and he looks over her head to the work-in-progress.

(Aren’t we all.)

Oh, shut up.

“I’m not sure when he’ll be back,” she admits then. “You might want to call him.”

This isn’t that sort of conversation.

He smiles, but only halfway.

Should’ve known things wouldn’t work out so easily. It was a long shot to start.

“Alright, thanks,” he dismisses, turning like it’s a form of procrastination.

About nine feet away, almost out of sight, he hears Harvey approach—clipped step, slight shuffle in the toes, rushing, worried, annoyed _(when did you learn how to read this language)—_ and looks back over his shoulder.

“Donna,” Harvey says midstride (brows down, fingers flexed, chest tight), “get me everything we’ve got on Denise Haverford.”

His hand is on his office door when she calls his name pointedly—“ _Harvey_ ”—and he turns back, ready to snap at her, but she’s holding out a thick accordion folder and everything about him relaxes at once as he takes it, the weight of the world lifted from his shoulders.

They’re a good pair, Mike thinks. They fit well.

“You’re a goddess,” Harvey breathes, opening the file and beginning to flick through it. She smiles serenely and begins doodling a circle on a Post-It note.

They know how to balance each other.

“Mike was looking for you,” she notes, and Harvey sighs dispiritedly.

“Dammit, did you tell him I’m busy?”

There’s a hot sensation in Mike’s stomach that he hasn’t felt in awhile.

“I told him to call you,” she replies promptly, and Mike waits.

Harvey breathes out through his teeth and slaps the file against his palm.

“Then it can wait until tomorrow.”

No, it’s okay. He would’ve said the same.

But then Harvey looks up on his way back inside, and there’s Mike, just peeking out from behind the wall, and he can’t let it go _now,_ and—

“Mike, Donna said you wanted to talk to me,” Harvey calls.

Donna said.

Donna peers over her shoulder at him and it feels like a challenge.

Is he really prepared to butt up against all that history, all those confidences, all the shared happiness and agony and trust and heartache and love? Harvey cares about him, he won’t deny it after all this time, but Mike won’t ever be first, will he? It was stupid to try, or even try to try, stupid to think it was a possibility, a no-I-know-but-what-if.

He’s loved Harvey for longer than even he can remember, the beginning more a hazy concept than a finite point, and just because he understands it now doesn’t mean anything has to change.

“Mike?” Harvey tries again, and Mike smiles, shaking his head.

“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

I’m trying not to.

I’m trying.

**Author's Note:**

> [This](https://www.restaurantnippon.com/) is the restaurant Rachel and Mike go to (it’s about a block away from Specter Litt, or at least the building that serves as its establishing shot).
> 
> Title from "I Dreamed a Dance" from _Next to Normal_ (2008).


End file.
